When Freyja Garbett steps onto the stage at City Recital Hall to support Japanese jazz icon Hiromi on 23 October, she’ll be doing more than performing her original compositions. She’ll be closing a loop, one that began on the beaches of the NSW South Coast, where she first started collecting motion data while surfing and transforming it into music.

“It’s definitely a dream realised,” Garbett says. “Hiromi is a powerhouse pianist I’ve long admired. To play my own music alongside my incredible band, Sandy Evans, Miles Thomas and Maximillian Alduca, on such a beautiful stage, feels surreal.”

The performance is part of SIMA’s Sydney Women’s International Jazz Festival and co-presented by Melbourne Jazz Festival, and marks a high point in Garbett’s evolution as a composer, producer and educator. Her upcoming album, Music from the Waves, commissioned by ABC Jazz and due for release in early 2026, draws from her postgraduate research at Sydney Conservatorium of Music: a radical experiment in sonifying motion data collected while surfing at Thirroul, Woonona and Krui in Sumatra.

“I’ve always felt a philosophical link between surfing and improvisation,” she...